GASHRY, Francis (1702-1762), of Hollybush House, Parson’s Green, London.

Gashry’s father was naturalized in 1709 as ‘Gascherye’;Denizations and Naturalizations, 1701-1800 (Huguenot Soc. London, xxvii), 84. in the books of the Sun Fire Office in 1710 the name is anglicized into ‘Gashery’.

Admiral Wager in his will refers to Gashry as ‘my very good friend’, and Gashry describes Wager as his ‘Great Patron’ on the monument which he raised to Wager in Westminster Abbey: it was under Wager’s wing that he started his official and parliamentary career. Wager made him successor to George Purvis, both as Member for Aldeburgh and as a commissioner of the navy; and from Wager’s letter to the mayor of East Looe25 Mar. 1741, East Looe Town Trust. it appears that there too, Gashry was Wager’s candidate, on the interest of Edward Trelawny. In 1742 he appeared before the secret committee appointed to inquire into Walpole’s Administration to give evidence regarding the payment of secret service money during Wager’s election for Westminster in 1741.CJ, xxiv. 331. In 1747 he resigned his office which, under the Place Act of 1742, was about to become incompatible with a seat in the Commons. On Trelawny’s departure for Jamaica as governor, Gashry became the intermediary between the Government and the Trelawny family, and also personal agent for the governor.Gashry to Trelawny, 25 July 1749 and 19 Mar. 1753, Add. 19038, ff. 44-45 and 48-49; also Gashry to Trelawny’s successor, Governor Knowles, 26 July 1753, ibid. ff. 50-51. Egmont wrote about the Looes in his electoral survey c.1749-50: ‘Gashry has the management of these boroughs in Trelawny’s absence’. The connexion, at first a business one, turned in time into a personal one, as Trelawny wrote to Gashry, 19 July 1753:

I look upon it as a thing fixed your being for one of the Looes. I must be so frank as to say that at first, when you were chosen, I was not for your being so but as one recommended by the ministry, so as they should be obliged to us for your being chosen, not reckon you as coming in by your own interest or at the desire of our family; but since I have entered into friendship with you, and you have given yourself a great deal of trouble in my affairs, and, as I apprehend, been of great service in them, the case is altered. As the matter now stands, I think neither Mr. Pelham nor myself can be against you, so that we may take you between us, both joining to recommend you, he to me, I to him, and both to the corporation.Vernon-Wager mss in Library of Congress.

He continued to represent East Looe until his death, 19 May 1762.